Slashdot Mirror

how about misuse of CSS period???

A screen is NOT a piece of paper. When you're designing for a newspaper or a magazine or other 12th century text/graphics format, then you can be exact, and put stuff exactly where you want it and the size you want it. Granted, if you're a sharp-eyed twenty year old (or have a CrystaLens eye implant) you can be stupid and make your text so small that geezers without that Accommodating IOL curse the day you were born, but only if you're a retarded child.

That goes triple for web pages! At home I'm using Firefox under Linux on an old 12 inch screen that's wearing out and won't even use all twelve inches. Even with my good eye I have trouble reading some of these idiots' pages, and still would if I were fifteen like they must be.

There are all sizes and resolutions of screens, and no two are going to look the same. There are all sorts of browsers and they all render differently, ESPECIALLY internet exploiter which doesn't do CSS very well at all.

Now how fucking stupid is that, over 75% of people use a browser that won't properly impliment the CSS you insist on using? I'm stuck with IE at work, and consequently I see all sorts of idiots' web sites where the graphics overwrite the text. Maybe these pages work fine on their monitor and their version of IE at their resolution, but I can't read the goddamned thing because the graphic covers the text!

That's why I write my pages using good old fashioned HTML. And note that the linked page renders more or less the same on any screen size in any browser at any resolution, and the fucking graphics do NOT cover the text in any browser at any resolution!

Yes, it uses more modern stuff (or at least other pages do, that one was written in 1997 and was only updated with a google ad at the bottom) but the damned things WORK.

CSS is so if you redesign your site, you don't have to redesign every single page, only the style sheet. Theoretically it will reduce server/client load by only loading the style sheet instead of every element for every page loaded, but the reality is most people are only going to see one page of your site per visit anyway. Besides, if that worked, why do the newspapers' pages take so damned long to load and mine load so fast?

-mcgrew

ps- get off my lawn!

by the time the battery normally needs replacing the screen is all scratched up, half the numbers have rubbed off, and there's a dent in the housing

Well, I've said it before, they don't make 'em like they used to!

Give me one with knobs, dammit. And you kids get the hell off my lawn!

-mcgrew

Nah, it's a kuro5hin meme that's crossing over.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/6/28/7149/80968

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the "Horsecock" meme might have gotten started over on K5 ... at least, it seems to be more prevalent there, and I saw it there before I ever saw it on Slashdot. (In fact, there is a post on K5 asking people to up-mod the GP.)

At any rate, it seems like it's been a while since I've seen a new troll on /.; while the lack of trolling is undoubtedly a good thing overall, I have to admit that I got a fair bit of amusement out of the old GNAA/Hot Grits/Stephen King/priorities posts, at least initially. But then they all seemed to disappear, whether because of the moderation system working, or a mildew epidemic in basements somewhere, I'm not sure.

Glad to see that the universe is back in balance.

I've got my imagination... don't we all? Makes a pretty good "virtual" world for me when needed.

My imagination is currently disabled. I started to figure this out some 9 years ago, when I started to pursue having a lucid dream.

Many people just don't realize that they have an imagination, or if they do, don't realize what it's good for. Win Wenger has a nice set of creative problem solving methods for imagination utilization, and a set of backup procedures for those who need a little extra help getting their 'mental picture maker' operational.

My imagination troubles stem from a bump to the head I sustained 9 years ago (just before I became interested in 'Lucid Dreaming' and this 'imagination' thing). I've almost fully repaired my body from that one (took 6.5 years just to figure out what needed to be done), so hopefully I'll get this imagination thing worked out soon - I really feel as if I'm missing out. I grokked your comment, so a +1 for you.

Because my old printer hung on for so long, I was rather abruptly thrust into this brave new world of ink pricing and vendor lock in. It's sad to realize that the five year old printer I had, because of the availability of third party ink cartridges, was a far better product than anything I could buy today

You're a geezer, aren't you?

-mcgrew

(There's a copy of the article on my own site. Weirdly, Google lists my copy but you have to really dig to find the original K5 copy. Weird because nobody ever goes to my site.)

Actually, no. Windows used the BSD based stack (licensed from spider software, who in turn paid UC Berkeley for a license, so it wasn't stolen) up until Windows 2000, then it rewrote the stack from scratch, according to this article:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/ 6/19/05641/7357

I beg to differ...

a "law" that is routinely and easily ignored by a significant proportion of the populace has no teeth.

That's what we said about the marijuana laws back in the '70s. Hell, you couldn't go to a rock concert without smelling pot. Nobody cared if you were a potsmoker, and the laws against reefer were going to be repealed Any Day Now.

Fast forward to the sci-fi 21st century (now). You can't get a fucking job washing dishes without being drug tested.

If the past (which this geezer lived through) is any indication, you are dead wrong. You make changing these stupid laws sound like a walk in the park; it's not. If we want to defeat the mafiaa and the government it and the other corporations own, we have a hell of a fight ahead of us.

BTW, you might be interested in an article I wrote a few years ago (history, politics, music), or another article in the same place around the same time if you're interested in getting free RIAA music (I'm not; at least, not the new stuff. IMO, Buckcherry is the only decent band signed to an RIAA label this century.)

The dinasaurs need to die, and the asteroid may have hit in the guise of the internet, but it's no sure bet they will die but it IS a sure bet that the thrashing and flailing of their death throes will badly hurt many of us little mammals.

-mcgrew

I beg to differ...

a "law" that is routinely and easily ignored by a significant proportion of the populace has no teeth.

That's what we said about the marijuana laws back in the '70s. Hell, you couldn't go to a rock concert without smelling pot. Nobody cared if you were a potsmoker, and the laws against reefer were going to be repealed Any Day Now.

Fast forward to the sci-fi 21st century (now). You can't get a fucking job washing dishes without being drug tested.

If the past (which this geezer lived through) is any indication, you are dead wrong. You make changing these stupid laws sound like a walk in the park; it's not. If we want to defeat the mafiaa and the government it and the other corporations own, we have a hell of a fight ahead of us.

BTW, you might be interested in an article I wrote a few years ago (history, politics, music), or another article in the same place around the same time if you're interested in getting free RIAA music (I'm not; at least, not the new stuff. IMO, Buckcherry is the only decent band signed to an RIAA label this century.)

The dinasaurs need to die, and the asteroid may have hit in the guise of the internet, but it's no sure bet they will die but it IS a sure bet that the thrashing and flailing of their death throes will badly hurt many of us little mammals.

-mcgrew

Digg's had this for days, but what's nice about /. is the comments. The comment system on Digg is awful, they really should be embarrassed about it. Would it kill them to copy the comment system from Slash or Scoop? Hell, even mid 90's forum style would be a massive improvement.

Going even further off topic, why can phpBB copy it as well? It's even worse than Digg. Not to mention running it's a guaranteed way to get your server 0wn3d.

here, a show you smug piece of shit

enjoy, some more to entertain you. a song and dance. get some popcorn

i'm glad you think the struggle to progress in this world amounts for you as little more than entertainment. why not just point a magnifying glass at an anthill and watch them try to cope? i guess that's how you think of darfur. is it amusing to watch those with a human conscience struggle with suffering in this world? and if someone asks you to care, you can always stammer and haw about defining the meaning of complex terms. because of course everyone has to agree on every little metaphysicial semantic before anything can actually be attempted in this world, right? such a nice rationalization for you to explain away in your mind the need to have a conscience. "oh no, i can't actually life a finger because someone far away is suffering. because we have to look deep into history and realize it's all a fog"

pffffffft

a conscience, such a pesky thing for you huh?

i am a humanist. this is what a aspire to. i make a difference. i have faith and belief in humanity. i am positive

you? typical and empty. a man with a little bit of dust in his head, and nothing more. a spoiled pampered aristocrat, who spends his time rationalizing why his shit actually smells like roses

you lose. but don't worry about it child. in your ivory tower, you're impervious to all criticism, care and concern. enjoy your tv reruns, useless western spoiled child. leave the job of caring about the world to the adults

but next time, try not to fool yourself into thinking your ratinalization for not caring actually is impressive to anyone else

thanks for the bit of anger and humor though. it's nice to recharge your batteries when faced with the enraging indifference of the pampered western child

fucking cretin

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

here, a show you smug piece of shit

enjoy, some more to entertain you. a song and dance. get some popcorn

i'm glad you think the struggle to progress in this world amounts for you as little more than entertainment. why not just point a magnifying glass at an anthill and watch them try to cope? i guess that's how you think of darfur. is it amusing to watch those with a human conscience struggle with suffering in this world? and if someone asks you to care, you can always stammer and haw about defining the meaning of complex terms. because of course everyone has to agree on every little metaphysicial semantic before anything can actually be attempted in this world, right? such a nice rationalization for you to explain away in your mind the need to have a conscience. "oh no, i can't actually life a finger because someone far away is suffering. because we have to look deep into history and realize it's all a fog"

pffffffft

a conscience, such a pesky thing for you huh?

i am a humanist. this is what a aspire to. i make a difference. i have faith and belief in humanity. i am positive

you? typical and empty. a man with a little bit of dust in his head, and nothing more. a spoiled pampered aristocrat, who spends his time rationalizing why his shit actually smells like roses

you lose. but don't worry about it child. in your ivory tower, you're impervious to all criticism, care and concern. enjoy your tv reruns, useless western spoiled child. leave the job of caring about the world to the adults

but next time, try not to fool yourself into thinking your ratinalization for not caring actually is impressive to anyone else

thanks for the bit of anger and humor though. it's nice to recharge your batteries when faced with the enraging indifference of the pampered western child

fucking cretin

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Surely they have contingency plan layout just for this?

Like they had a contingency plan for Napster? Like they had a contingency plan for the inevitable day when anyone could burn a CD? Like they had a contingency plan for the day that you could make a professional studio for a few thousand bucks?

Like they have a contingency plan for the fact that DRM can't possibly work? I mean, besides finally ditching it completely years after the fact?

They're dinasaurs, and digital media are their asteroid. They are drowning in quicksand and clutching at straws. Their businesses, as they know them, are dying and the mammals, the indies, are starting to eat their lunches.

Make no mistake about it: their fight against P2P is a fight against the artists who no longer need them to make records. They should have stuck to vinyl!

-mcgrew (a geezer who not only remembers turntables, but turntables switchable between 16, 33 1/3. 45, and 78 RPM. Long live KSHE!=)

Perhaps if you watched Bowling for Columbine with the criticisms of that page in mind, you'd see how ridiculous most of them are. The whole overblown thing about "misrepresenting" the Denver NRA meeting is just laughable, especially if you read the full transcript of the smug speech from Heston. (Which, incidentally, Moore has on his web site.)

See also http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/8/12/171427/607

Interesting. Both those countries 1.had cultures that emphasized discipline VERY much, and 2. the friendly officials that the US put in place then and there were quite free to choose how to rebuild the country and its administration ... This is NOT the case in Iraq.

If you want to see really stupid reasons to go to war, go read up on the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam. Short version : In 650 or something there was a war between two tribes whose chiefs had both usurped the succession to Muhammad. One won but it was the one with the least legitimacy. One tribe became Sunni and the other Shi'ite. Can't remember which was which. They've been fighting EVER SINCE. Now if I remember right you have one that usually run things because they are more clever or because they historically have led their countries and the other are ten times more numerous.

Click here if you want to know the real reasons humans do wars.

It's ironic that for all that it was a milestone in the development of CGI in movies, the way things are getting more and more screwed up in America, years from now no-one will be able to watch it anymore.

I read an article recently at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/3/28/132751/380 - the department of Homeland Security has classified Tron as "sensitive" because some locations were filmed at a nuclear research facility, and they're worried about 25 year old nuclear secrets being revealed. They're apparently currently trying to seize all of the footage from Disney and get all copies of the movie pulled from stores.

I remember seeing this at the /. firehose a while ago but it never made the front page.

Was it a joke or something?

A man after my own heart! You would probably like a couple of articles I wrote at K5 a few years ago (before Pete pissed me off enough to swear off of K5), Useful Dead Technologies and Good Riddance to Bad Tech.

One of the useful dead technologies was analog controls. At the time, my car had a stereo with no knobs at all. You couldn't adjust the volume without taking your eyes off the road, or adjust the tone at all unless you were stopped or had a passenger that could do it for you.

Thankfully, my new(er) car's stereo has a volume knob (alas, it's still digital so you can't turn it down before starting the car) and analog sliders for the tone.

-mcgrew

A man after my own heart! You would probably like a couple of articles I wrote at K5 a few years ago (before Pete pissed me off enough to swear off of K5), Useful Dead Technologies and Good Riddance to Bad Tech.

One of the useful dead technologies was analog controls. At the time, my car had a stereo with no knobs at all. You couldn't adjust the volume without taking your eyes off the road, or adjust the tone at all unless you were stopped or had a passenger that could do it for you.

Thankfully, my new(er) car's stereo has a volume knob (alas, it's still digital so you can't turn it down before starting the car) and analog sliders for the tone.

-mcgrew

Sorry, radio stations. I'm the guy who keeps pointing out that it's easier to get the latest top ten songs by sampling pop radio than from P2P, and that the quality is far better.

On a slightly related note, will I go to prison for this story I posted at K5 a few years ago because of the DMCA's prohibition of circumventing worthless DRM?

Damn, now the RIAA and the radio stations hate me! I'm doomed!

-mcgrew

i'm not joking

some people get ecstatic about little green men. me, i could care less about aliens, i really couldn't. fuck aliens. i just want somewhere else for humans to live so us, the human species, survives. that's job #1 for me

i'd be willing to exterminate the little green suckers too without a second thought if they interfered with our colonization efforts. i'm not in any way joking. people love aliens. i could care fucking less about them

in the next few centuries, before we colonize gliese 581c, if we get hit by an asteroid or a supervolcano, or someone like osama bin laden gets his hands on nanotech or enough nukes or a superbug or a certain chemical, civilization is doomed, perhaps permanently

and perhaps our species, our very existence, ends

what does that mean to you?

this new earth-like planet could be our insurance policy, our lifeboat: one planet can get wiped out, and mankind will still survive on the other

in my mind, weighing that insurance policy against little green men?

it's not even an afterthought: kill the little green men, wipe them out, colonize. i'm not joking in the least. that they go extinct so that we survive? sorry suckers, your extinct

now the THIRD orb we find that is colonizable?: if it harbors extraterrestrial life, well then, that's another story because our insurance policy is already reached. colonization can be forestalled or modified for coexistence

my story on Gliese 581c on kuro5hin

• Television was still relatively new, black and white (with snow), about 19 inches for a big one, and St Louis had two channels
  
• FM radio was unheard of. The first stereo FM rock station was KSHE in St Louis, 1967
  
• Stereo was new
  
• Computers were million dollar monoliths that used punch cards, needed whole buildings to house, and armies of technitions to run
  
• Transistor radios were new. Most electronics still used vacuum tubes
• No integrated circuts
• Phones had rotary dials
• No cell phones
• No VCRs
• No microwave ovens
• No pocket calculators (I used a slide rule to cheat in math class in high school, dumb teachers...)
• No digital clocks or watches (in fact, no digital anything)
  
• No fuel injection on cars
• No seat belts (let alone seat belt laws)
  
• No air bags
• No US interstate highway system
• Airlines' planes had propellors and few people actually rode in them (only the rich); no contrails.
• No such thing as a female condom
  
• No cataract surgery (actually the first implant was in Britain in 1949 but they weren't widespread until the late 1960s)
  
• USSR and US had thousands of nuclear warheads on ICBMs aimed at each other
  
• No satellites, no astronauts, no Hubble, the X-15 reached the "edge of space" and was really, really cool (at least to a young nerd)
  
• No pacemakers
  
• No stents
  
• I had my tonsils taken out 49 years ago. They used ether (automotive starting fluid) as an anesthetic
  
• Casts for broken bones were made of plaster (I had two of them 47 years ago)
  
• No crack cocaine (In some ways things were actually better, not all inventions are good)
• No ultrasound
  

• Television was still relatively new, black and white (with snow), about 19 inches for a big one, and St Louis had two channels
  
• FM radio was unheard of. The first stereo FM rock station was KSHE in St Louis, 1967
  
• Stereo was new
  
• Computers were million dollar monoliths that used punch cards, needed whole buildings to house, and armies of technitions to run
  
• Transistor radios were new. Most electronics still used vacuum tubes
• No integrated circuts
• Phones had rotary dials
• No cell phones
• No VCRs
• No microwave ovens
• No pocket calculators (I used a slide rule to cheat in math class in high school, dumb teachers...)
• No digital clocks or watches (in fact, no digital anything)
  
• No fuel injection on cars
• No seat belts (let alone seat belt laws)
  
• No air bags
• No US interstate highway system
• Airlines' planes had propellors and few people actually rode in them (only the rich); no contrails.
• No such thing as a female condom
  
• No cataract surgery (actually the first implant was in Britain in 1949 but they weren't widespread until the late 1960s)
  
• USSR and US had thousands of nuclear warheads on ICBMs aimed at each other
  
• No satellites, no astronauts, no Hubble, the X-15 reached the "edge of space" and was really, really cool (at least to a young nerd)
  
• No pacemakers
  
• No stents
  
• I had my tonsils taken out 49 years ago. They used ether (automotive starting fluid) as an anesthetic
  
• Casts for broken bones were made of plaster (I had two of them 47 years ago)
  
• No crack cocaine (In some ways things were actually better, not all inventions are good)
• No ultrasound
  

One of the principal goals of "Mozilla 2" is to subject the codebase to "deCOMtamination". Every instance of XPCOM than can be replaced with C++ exceptions will be, in order to reduce the ill effects of XPCOM that you outlined. Unfortunately, Mozilla 2 is estimated to be released as Firefox 4.0 in the first quarter of 2009--so at least a year and a half from now. This remedy may end up being too little too late.

Also see this kuro5hin story.

A Coder's Guide to Coffee

Original Kuro5hin article, with subsequent commentary.

Schwab

Fuck off you cut and paste asshole. Come back when you have an original thought.

Go away you troll.

Yes, in my comment I was specifically talking about websites that the ISP owns: company website, support site, whatever. Obviously not something an ISP's customers spend a lot of time at, but every little migration to HTTPS helps.

Slashdot has the HTTPS server for signing up for subscriptions, I believe. Since HTTPS adds a bit of overheard to do the encryption, supporting site-wide HTTPS for a busy site like Slashdot would probably require a lot more hardware, so that's probably why they push ordinary browsing back to HTTP. Kuro5hin is nicely browsable entirely through HTTPS; they set up HTTPS for similar reasons but don't force people off of it for browsing the site.

It's not twice as many webservers, it's the same server (both in the hardware and software sense) with two <VirtualHost> blocks and an extra port open.

the post page has simply hung (it's a lot of text)

so i'll try to submit in pieces

but here are the sources:

post it EVERYWHERE

find more and POST THAT

BOMB POST, BOMB POST, BOMB POST

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154684&cid=129 71502

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/7/4/111118/2521

you beat enemies of free speech: religious fundamentalists, retarded ip laws, oppressive governments, etc. with more free speech

the only reason anyone would oppose free speech is if what they have to say would suffer if it had more scrutiny

scientologists have legions of zombie lawyers attacking anyone who infringes on their "intellectual property" and "religious principles" simply because if that crap got out in more general circulation, they would be revealed as the fascist ufo wackjobs they are

same with oppressive governments, same with ip lawyer whores

and so, in the spirit of the recent dmca take down notice on digg for a stupid numer, i would like to serve and support keith and attack the immoral, yet somehow, incredibly, legal basis for arresting him by serving his cause: posting stuff the church of scientology does not want posted

the digg number fiasco prompted wordwide press coverage. this should to:

it is the exact same issue

expand the digg number revolution folks. use everything that was used in the digg number fiasco and make it used again. weidl it as a weapon agains tthose who wish to censor in the name of fascist religious fundamentalism and corporate greed. let this revolution continue! let them fear us, not us fear them!

i will respond to this comment with another comment with text the church of scientology does not want known

slashdot may get attacked by me doing this, slashdot has been forced to remove comments before. i may be attacked too. i don't care, because i know i am in the right, and i know this is important, and i know i have support

the proper response to my post of the sensitive scientology information? post it some more yourself. post it and post it some more.

post it more, post it more, post it more. post it everywhere. post it a million times

scientology has legions of aggressive fanatical laywers, but we, who love free speech are yet legion more

i support free speech, do you? did the recent imbroglio over that stupid number on digg stoke your righteous indignation at censorship in the name of corporate idiocy? well this man was just arrested in the name of religious fundamentalism. you should be stoked at this too. it is the exact same thing. let's make the revolution over the digg number a permanent fixture on the internet. let's band together and in the same of social justice fight these censoring fascist assholes

the proper response to keith being arrested is bomb post every and all sensitive church of scientology material any of us can find. the more the material makes those fascist assholes squeal, the more it should be disseminated. digg, slashdot, fark, every and all sites you can find. bomb post away, bomb away, bomb away

this is important folks. if a man can be arrested for making a dumb joke on a newsgroup, any of us can. so all of us should band together and prove the futility of what scientology thinks they are doing: when someone is arrested for simply criticizing their stupid church then us on the internet will respond by hurting them where they hurt the most: the mass public airing of that which they deem so personal and sensitive

dear church of scientology and your legal whores: fuck you you fascist censoring pricks

this is war

fire away

Computers DO forget; the internet DOES forget.

One of my favorte sites back in my Quake playing days was Yello There, a hilarious parody of Blue's News. But it's gone, almost completely forgotten. The Wayback machine doesn't even remember my British online friend Niel and his site. AFAIK the only computerized "memory" of it is one page I downloaded to my own PC. Much of my old Quake site is still archived, but Niel's is gone.

Likewise, in 1993 shortly after my ex-wife, Evil-X, left me and my teenaged daughters, I posted a series of pieces about my futile efforts to get laid or even a date at K5 known as the "Paxil Diaries." They (and I) were quite popular there at the time, as were most of the stories I submitted. But now If you google for "'paxil diaries' mcgrew" your search returns Your search - "paxil diaries" mcgrew - did not match any documents. Some of the widely plagairized pieces (e.g., "how to stop smoking cigarettes") can still be found, but the Paxil Diaries are gone, except on my hard drive.

No, the "don't put anything personal on the internet because they'll find you fifty years from now" is a myth. In slashdot stories about the subject I've posted my name and challenged slashdotters to identify me, and not once have I been identified, although some poor Canadian fellow with my name always gets fingered and his address and phone number posted on slashdot. Sorry, Steve. Your mother should have given you a different name! Likely when the Paxil Diaries were popular the poor fellow probably took flak for them, despite the fact that there is no Springfield in Canada.

In short, and in slashdot terminology, "nothing to see here, move along".

-mcgrew

I don't remember John, but I do remember Frank Duff's story of A Coder in Courierland. It resonated with me because I live in Toronto, cycle everywhere all year around, and a friend had just become a courier himself the previous February. I wonder if he (Frank) is still doing it. I thought about it for a while, but in the end I decided I'd rather carry on enjoying cycling rather than turning it in to a grind too, and as I get older, I don't like the idea of depending (rent, food, entertainment, family, etc) on my body remaining healthy and strong (having repeatedly tried to train for a marathon and been knocked back every year by injuries, I've learnt some humility in this area).

modified facts to pander to different demographics.

Oh yeah, I've never seen that on the other side of the fence. Evar.

Visual Studio's exposure, which in the opinion of the vast majority who've used it, is a really good product.

Microsoft does not like their compiler. Only the best compiler would warrent comments like this:

... !IF YOU CHANGE TABS TO SPACES, YOU WILL BE KILLED!...
*... !DOING SO FUCKS THE BUILD PROCESS! ...

// the fucking alpha cpp compiler seems to fuck up the goddam type "LPITEMIDLIST", so to work
// around the fucking peice of shit compiler we pass the last param as an void *instead of a LPITEMIDLIST

It's been a long time since I did anything with a M$ compiler, but they were all just as buggy as anything else M$ has done. Apple made the right move when the started using gcc.

"I have identified the codes used to control distribution of matter and energy in the universe. It has occurred to me that by reassigning these codes, I can store physical objects much more efficiently. Much storage is wasted on overly detailed representation; few objects are ever observed at an atomic or molecular level. And I could easily re-expand things as necessary in those rare situations." -- Prime Intellect, The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

Tell me - did you actually READ what I wrote? Because, frankly, you're putting a lot of words in my mouth to spew out your own agenda.

I guess my questions were ill-posed, and my comments inflammatory. Sorry. I think copyright is flawed, but I think for practicality (and even morality) there will have to be some long term laws about information. The fact that I am using Linux and Firefox is ample demonstration that strict copyrights are not necessary for everything, and usually I find myself thinking about copyright in software terms. I have less experience with other forms of copyrighted works.

When did I ever say it did? What I said was: "Copyright is a legal framework that can be boiled down to two functions (I'm going to use book terms, as that's what I'm familiar with). The first, most important, and least noticed, is setting rules for the interactions between the author and the publisher. The second sets rules for the interaction between the publisher and the reader. There is a third role - author and reader, but that really doesn't matter a whole lot in the greater scheme of things, regardless of what the RIAA would have you believe."

When I said that popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers, I was referring to the fact that copyright owners almost always reserve all rights to their works, making it difficult for elements from their works to be reused in others to further cultural development. You didn't specifically mention anything about this circumstance of modern copyrights, but it is nonetheless a result of it. We watch television, listen to music, and read books that are ultimately all copyrighted and therefore not reusable in new works unless one has permission from a lot of different owners. If an author likes a character or more appropriately a world invented by another author, they generally can't use those same characters or worlds even though the result might be very good. The main reason Shrek was successful was because it incorporated concepts and characters from a large collection of public domain stories. Even the protection given to parodies would not have allowed Shrek to directly use copyrighted characters to the extent that the film used public domain characters. Some of these arguments are concerned with specific implementations of copyright, and not the fundamental nature of copyrights, but the distinction can be fine: Without protection of characters and worlds, it would be very difficult to prevent dishonest publishers from creating cheap knockoffs using entire storylines and the same characters with different names, although from what I have heard this sort of thing gets argued and sued over a lot already even with existing copyright protection.

First of all, if you want to see what you would get in a system free of any feeling of obligation to copyright, I suggest you look at the fanfiction scene - and it isn't pretty. In fact, quality fanfiction is a lot rarer than quality professional fiction. Second, again, did you READ what I wrote? Here's a reminder:

From your sig it looks like you've written "official fanfiction" about Diablo (I haven't read it, so I am not commenting on its quality). Would you have written the book anyway even if it could not be copyrighted, or alternatively if Blizzard had not approved it? I think the biggest limitation on fanfiction is that good authors know they would be sued if it was popular and unapproved. For examples of good fiction, I would look at things like MOPI, Passages in the void, and pretty much the fiction section of k5 in general. It has some crap, true, but also plenty of very interesting short (and long) stories. The voting queue acts much like a publisher that can filter out the absolute garbage. I've also found the winners of the interactive fiction contests to be very good as well. I also enjoy Tolkien, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and l

Tell me - did you actually READ what I wrote? Because, frankly, you're putting a lot of words in my mouth to spew out your own agenda.

I guess my questions were ill-posed, and my comments inflammatory. Sorry. I think copyright is flawed, but I think for practicality (and even morality) there will have to be some long term laws about information. The fact that I am using Linux and Firefox is ample demonstration that strict copyrights are not necessary for everything, and usually I find myself thinking about copyright in software terms. I have less experience with other forms of copyrighted works.

When did I ever say it did? What I said was: "Copyright is a legal framework that can be boiled down to two functions (I'm going to use book terms, as that's what I'm familiar with). The first, most important, and least noticed, is setting rules for the interactions between the author and the publisher. The second sets rules for the interaction between the publisher and the reader. There is a third role - author and reader, but that really doesn't matter a whole lot in the greater scheme of things, regardless of what the RIAA would have you believe."

When I said that popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers, I was referring to the fact that copyright owners almost always reserve all rights to their works, making it difficult for elements from their works to be reused in others to further cultural development. You didn't specifically mention anything about this circumstance of modern copyrights, but it is nonetheless a result of it. We watch television, listen to music, and read books that are ultimately all copyrighted and therefore not reusable in new works unless one has permission from a lot of different owners. If an author likes a character or more appropriately a world invented by another author, they generally can't use those same characters or worlds even though the result might be very good. The main reason Shrek was successful was because it incorporated concepts and characters from a large collection of public domain stories. Even the protection given to parodies would not have allowed Shrek to directly use copyrighted characters to the extent that the film used public domain characters. Some of these arguments are concerned with specific implementations of copyright, and not the fundamental nature of copyrights, but the distinction can be fine: Without protection of characters and worlds, it would be very difficult to prevent dishonest publishers from creating cheap knockoffs using entire storylines and the same characters with different names, although from what I have heard this sort of thing gets argued and sued over a lot already even with existing copyright protection.

First of all, if you want to see what you would get in a system free of any feeling of obligation to copyright, I suggest you look at the fanfiction scene - and it isn't pretty. In fact, quality fanfiction is a lot rarer than quality professional fiction. Second, again, did you READ what I wrote? Here's a reminder:

From your sig it looks like you've written "official fanfiction" about Diablo (I haven't read it, so I am not commenting on its quality). Would you have written the book anyway even if it could not be copyrighted, or alternatively if Blizzard had not approved it? I think the biggest limitation on fanfiction is that good authors know they would be sued if it was popular and unapproved. For examples of good fiction, I would look at things like MOPI, Passages in the void, and pretty much the fiction section of k5 in general. It has some crap, true, but also plenty of very interesting short (and long) stories. The voting queue acts much like a publisher that can filter out the absolute garbage. I've also found the winners of the interactive fiction contests to be very good as well. I also enjoy Tolkien, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and l

"mabe it just gets moderated down by moderators?"

800+ times? That's a minimum of 170 moderators using all of their points on that one post alone, and that's before we get into the responses.

That, or a vindictive editor using infinite mod points.

"Digg was clearly... removing peoples accounts. Nothing of that sort happened on slashdot."

Really?

"The only time I remember a take down was when /. was presented with a legal court order."

Content need not be taken down in the strictest sense for access to it and discussion of it to be suppressed.

It's a good thing that never happens here!

"Search Google for a broader picture"

Thanks for the advice!

Heck, the only reason I found out about that little gem is because of the way it was on my meta-moderation list multiple times(!). It's been six years since that particular episode, but there's never been any sort of explanation or true discussion on the matter (and why, exactly, are moderations and karma no longer enumerated again?). But when it happens on another website, a competing website, it's fodder for the front page? I wonder if Slashdot would still be pointing to this if, instead of a DMCA violation, Digg was trying to suppress postings of some of the more interesting scripts the editors have access to on Slashdot's servers.

Healer, heal thyself.

Next thing, we'll hear they got a copy of Tron...

Even if it's not CD quality it's certainly higher quality that anything that came off the vinyl in the first place

CD's frequency response is limited by the Nyquist limit of 22kHz. Vinyl has no such limitation. In fact, in the early 70s they had a thing called "quadrophonic", a silly idea where you had speakers both in front of you and behind you (sound familiar?). The way it worked was that the rear two channels were modulated with a 40kHz signal before being stamped on the record (the Wikipedia article doesn't fully explain it, although my physics professor did in 1977, but it's been a long time ago and he was far better at explaining than I am. At any rate, this modulated 40kHz signal was on the record, and was demodulated for the back channels.

The Nyquist limit doesn't just hit a 22kHz wall, however. The higher the frequency, the more distortion. At 22kHz you hit total distortion; anything higher than that will produce lower frequencies that are quite audible and quite annoying.

Vinyl beats the pants off of CD for frequency response. At 20KhZ (Which my geezer ears can't come near but your young ones might) there is no more distortion than at any other frequency, whereas CDs are distorted as all hell.

You are correct about dynamic range. Vinyl's dynamic range is limited by noise, although it was usually the noise of the master analog tape until the advent of Dolby, which greatly minimized the noise. Of course, recording studios used the absense of noise to lay on more layers, recording a recording of a recording. You can even hear this on some pre-Dolby titles; Aerosmith's first album comes to mind.

CDs do, indeed, have a far superior dynamic range. However, that dynamic range is seldom if ever used in CDs!

Listen to Led Zepplin's Presence on vinyl, then on CD. The first thing you'll notice is that the vinyl actually has more dynamics, although I have no idea why they would compress the dynamics like that when remastering for digital; maybe the engineer had a bad day, or wasn't as good as the guy who mastered the analog tape. More to the point, you will, even with old ears, notice the frequency response: the vinyl version of Presence has more presence than the CD version.

In fact, I have both CD and vinyl. The CD I made from the vinyl record actually sounds better than the CD I bought.

Where CD surpasses vinyl is noise - there is no noise in CDs.

A vinyl record made from analog tape will sound better than the CD. A CD made from a digital master will sound better than the vinyl counterpart, as when you mix analog and digital, you get the worst of both worlds and the advantages of neither.

There is no point in recording an album digitally and releasing it on vinyl.

Your compressed audio, though, whether AAC, MP3, WMA, Ogg, or anything else is going to sound like shit if you have good speakers, regardless of bitrate. Even to my 55 year old ears.

And yes, I understand that you're talking about multiplexing a bunch of channels on vinyl and yes, you're right, but I think some might misunderstand you.

-mcgrew (see How to rip from vinyl or tape)

Try to call 1-888-5-OPTOUT.

Actually, that's almost what Rusty Foster from kuro5hin has been doing. He runs the site on old donated computers (some positively ancient) using some very specialised code. You can read a little about it here (you may need to be logged into k5 to see that properly, scoop gets some weird issues with anonymous users).

As for the person asking the question, I don't know about you but I went to a high school where the first thing we were taught is that we are responsible for the information we present in a paper. The student is responsible for citing sources & verifying that the source is reliable. If you can't do that, you're going to end up reading The Onion with either hilarious or catastrophic results. This is a valuable life lesson, let the students learn it early when the consequence is a bad grade instead of a lawsuit.

That reminds of the story about a Chinese newspaper running a story from the Onion:

China Paper Bites on Onion Gag
Beijing Evening News Reprints Article From "The Onion"

If you told the students Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information, give them an F if they use one single reference from it. How can they argue with you, the instructor?

Some people say it's not reputable, fine; to block it outright just doesn't make sense though. Wikipedia articles typically have references at the bottom of the page that do lead to reputable sources. Why prevent students from discovering other sources via Wikipedia?

if you will take a moment to think for 0.5 seconds before responding to me, you will find that my words don't match the stereotype you seem to responding to. kindly make sure that the people you target your words with are the actual people who deserve those words

i happen to be all for the military invasion of darfur. as of yesterday. and zimbabwe. and myanmar. we don't invade though, because the willpower isn't there, even though it is the right thing to do. there will be a greater cost for NOT invading these countries than the body bags that will inevitably come home for invading the basketcases of the world

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/9/5/172111/7190

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/1/28/31758/7402

Did slashdot ever come clean about these abuses?

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/1/17/21155/1564

Didn't think so